The possible involvement of city councils in setting the dates of the Jewish
calendar does not necessarily mean that membership of the city councils was
entirely Jewish. Even in cities with high Jewish populations as well as centres of
rabbinic activity such as Tiberias, Sepphoris, and Lod, we cannot assume that
the city councils were composed entirely of Jews; and even if they were, the
coinage of these cities suggests that their city councilors must have been
heavily paganized.^145 But pagan non-Jews or paganized Jews (whatever the
meaning of these problematic categories) were perhaps just as likely to use a
lunar calendar as were the Jews. Indeed, that had been the tradition through-
out the Near East before the arrival of the Romans, and lunar calendars were
still being used in many parts of the Roman East (such as in Greece). Although
in the Near East itself, most local calendars had become Julianized (see
Chapter 5), in the cities of Palestine where Jews and/or Samaritans were
numerous and perhaps in the majority, a lunar calendar is more likely to
have been retained.^146 This possibly explains Galen’s statement (in the mid or
later second centuryCE) that‘those in Palestine’follow a lunar calendar,
without specifying any ethnic group such as Samaritans or Jews.^147 If, in
these cities, the lunar calendar functioned as the official local calendar, it
could have been used equally by Jews and Samaritans as well as pagans for
the dates of their religious festivals.^148
regular occasions, see Schmitt Pantel (1992) 168–70, 175–7, 303–26, who rightly underscores the
political function of this practice.
(^145) The common view that Tiberias, Sepphoris, and Lod were centres of rabbinic activity is
borne out by the frequent association of these cities with rabbis in rabbinic literature (see Miller
2006). Note also Epiphanius’comment, for what it is worth, that Tiberias and Sepphoris/
Diocaesarea (in the mid-4th c.) were Jewish only, without any Gentiles, Greeks, Samaritans, or
Christians (Panarion30. 11. 9–10,Williams 1987–94: i. 128). But on their pagan coinages and
the implicit paganization of their city councils, see e.g. S. Schwartz (2001) 132–42.
(^146) Little is known about the ancient Samaritan calendar, although in the Middle Ages it was
undoubtedly lunar (Weis 1946), and 3rd-c. rabbinic sources already imply that the Samaritans
reckoned a similar calendar to the Jews, though sometimes with a one-day discrepancy (tPish:a2:
2, ed. Lieberman p. 145, on the date of Passover; the passage also mentions the Samaritans
sometimes celebrating Passover‘not with the Jews’, which probably means one whole month
earlier or later due to a different intercalation; see Ch. 7 n. 180). Cities of the coastline such as
Caesarea, which were largely pagan or‘Greek’, are known to have adapted their calendars to the
Julian calendar (see Ch. 5); so did the province of Arabia, whose calendar seems to have been
influential, together with those of Gaza and Ascalon, in other southern Palestinian cities (see
Meimaris 1992, although the epigraphic evidence tends to be inconclusive as to how the
calendars were actually reckoned). It is perhaps because the calendar of Caesarea was not
lunar that R. Abbahu, who resided there, particularly needed the decisions of the rabbinic
court to be transmitted to him (pRH3: 1 (58d)). But in the inland cities of western Judaea,
Samaria, and Galilee there is no evidence of calendar Julianization, and there I should expect
most civic calendars to have remained lunar.
(^147) Galen,InHippocratis Epidemiarum Libros Commentarius3 (ed. Kühn, xvii/1. 23), cited in
M. Stern (1974–84) ii no. 394, who, however, attributes this phrase to Galen’s ignorance of the
Jews and Judaism (ibid. 309).
(^148) Although pagan cults in Palestine had become somewhat Romanized by the late Roman
period (Belayche 2001, esp. 281–92), the dates of their festivals could well have remained lunar.
346 Calendars in Antiquity